Developing apps for the Raspberry Pi that utilize the Xbox 360 Kinect is best accomplished with libfreenect. Libfreenect is an open-source library that provides access to the sensors and motors on the Kinect.

Raspbian’s apt repository has version 0.2 of libfreenect, which is quite old and seems to be missing a lot of the features that the latest code has. I’ve documented the steps for building the latest LibFreenect source code and dependencies, below (0.5.3 as of this post).

There is a pretty well known proxy hack that will allow Windows Phone users to simulate other device manufacturers when visiting the Windows Phone Store. This allows you to download and install Windows Phone 8 software that is exclusive to other devices. As any HTC Windows Phone user probably knows, they’ve basically been left in the dust by HTC. HTC hasn’t provided any decent apps or updates in months and they seem to be totally neglecting their Windows Phone users. I feel like I made a huge mistake by choosing HTC over Nokia (and yes, I’m very bitter because of it).

So that leaves us with a few choices, either just deal with it and receive no updates or support from a company that doesn’t care about you, get a new phone (and the only way to go is Nokia if you want to stick with WP8), or use this hack to get some of the cool Nokia and Samsung features on your phone.

I had so much trouble getting Windows 7 to load on the HP p2-1334 Desktop PC. The only OS option it comes with is Windows 8, which I actually like quite a bit, but it’s for one of the staff I work with and I didn’t feel like training them on it – plus it wasn’t the Pro edition so I couldn’t join it to the domain without upgrading.

I decided it might be nice to throw together a small tutorial on loading Windows 7, and hopefully help at least one poor soul out there. I’ve also read complaints about not being able to change the boot priority (despite the fact that this is an option in the BIOS), which I will also address here.